In a text from 2004, Conceptual art, social psychology and deception, Peter Goldie exposes an analogy between this method of “deception” adopted by social psychologists and the strategy of some contemporary artists (Santiago Sierra, Space Closed by Corrugated Metal and Leeds 13:13, Going Places).
Other art theorists who analyzed a very similar strategy in contemporary art are Anne Cauquelin (who used the term “décept” for a variety of practices provoking or betraying the audience in a certain aspect) or Maxence Alcalde, who associated the term “mètis” to tactics like artifice or fraud, distortion or deception, which imply confusing the opponent in a certain manner.
In this article, we are going to trace the artistic strategy of “deception” as approached by Peter Goldie, “décept” or “mètis” in the particular context of central and eastern European art in order to scrutinize its possible idiosyncrasies determined by the local socio-political environment. We are going to analyze some key “deceptive” works of contemporary art from this area from the last six decades so that we can identify which strategy is more prevalent: either “deception”, “décept” (which mean operating within the institutional context and “deceiving” the art audiences’ expectations) or “mètis” (which usually implies disguise and intervention in the immediate reality and at the same time turning around an unfavourable power relation). Another interesting idea would be to start apprehending whether the expectations of the art audiences are seemingly different in a socialist or post-socialist context or not, since the access to information about new movements in western art was limited for decades, at least in certain countries. And, as a consequence, the eventual necessity regarding a different kind of “deception” could become more evident.